The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 242
226 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN should accept it, well, they try. But the President comes to his own decision after he has heard everybody. Question : With a large Afro-Asian bloc being half of the United Nations and with a Western bloc and a Socialist bloc facing each other antagonistically on Cold-war questions, did this present a problem when you did assign committee posts and when you tried to develop this broad consensus so that the UN could move ahead ? Zafrulla : No, that did not present any problem because there are traditions in respect of apportionment of these things, though one took some soundings with regard to individual countries. Now, supposing I knew that the East Europeans were entitled to one or two nominations to a committee, I tried to ascertain which of their members would they wish to be nominated, and that happened with regard to every group: one tried to find out and then one tried to do one's best. It always happened that the East Europeans were quite clear and precise: if they had only one nomination, they gave me only one name. But sometimes I had more names than there were nominations for a group: then I had to make my choice. Question : Were there any particular issues during the 17th Session of the General Assembly which gave you bad moments: the question of credentials, the People's Republic of China or Nationalist China, or any other recurrent sort of crisis topics which come up on the agenda annually ? Zafrulla : No. Looking back immediately when the matter was fresh in my mind, in the last Session, I had no feelings at all that anything had given me a bad moment. Occasionally, I found that somebody, some delegation or a certain number of delegations, desired something conducted in a different way from the way I would have preferred. But then I always knew that I was the servant of the Assembly, and when a desire became clear to me and if the rules gave me discretion, I tried to exercise the discretion not as I would have wished but as they wished, because what I would have wished had nothing to do with the matter. Sometimes I gave it expression; that is, that I wished it one way, but that I was equally happy to do it another way. Question : One of the obvious aspects of your job was one of representation. You were the embodiment of the General Assembly and as such was no doubt called upon to be at every social gathering and at